Monday, 15 July 2013

The Doctor Will See You Now: So Too Will the Advertisers

Patients
are about to be targeted like never before by advertising companies as face
recognition software merges with information screens to profile your interests
as you wait for your doctor.

LordSugar is on the verge of selecting one
more hard-nosed apprentice to his entrepreneurial stable as his Apprentice
programme reaches its latest conclusion this Wednesday. Quite what work the
eventual winner will undertake is unclear but a previous winner was selected
to run the sales of a project that profiles patients in the NHS as they sit and
wait for their GP.

Amscreen
Plc is part of Lord Sugar’s Amshold Group of companies, which is based
in the tax haven of Jersey and is overseen by his son Simon Sugar, who is the
CEO. The company, which launched in 2008 when Lord Sugar bought Comtech M2M, provides T.V screens into places where there is a captive
audience and places targeted marketing alongside the other content the
organisation may use. These screens are placed
in GP surgeries, hospitals and dentists throughout the UK and in Europe
and also in petrol stations, convenience stores.

The
way it works is like this. Amscreen will place a screen for free in say a GP
surgery, which allows the surgery to inform patients on matters such as surgery
opening hours or flu jab reminders. The money they get is by selling the other
space on the screen to advertisers which will be part of a pre-packaged programme
that will reach the captive audience waiting to be seen by their doctor.

Amscreen distributes
its screens in two main ways: by either funding the screen and
installation at a client's premises, allocating some airtime to that
client alongside the preloaded advertising, or by selling screens
to a client and enabling them to control their own media
network (in return for a small monthly fee) where they have 100%
control of the ad content.

Amscreen
healthhas expanded their operation so that around 850
screens now exist in 695 GP surgeries, Pharmacies, Hospitals, and Dentists. Amscreen
offer various packages depending on their target audiences, which are tailored
towards over 55s, health charities, mother & baby, pharmaceuticals and
private health. Amscreen is mainly in the UK, but is expanding into Europe and around the world.

In partnership

Three
years ago, Amscreen and private hospital group, BMI Healthcare agreed a
two-year partnership, which involved BMI Healthcare providing live weather
feeds to advise patients on their ‘healthcare choice’. Quite how many meteorologists
exist within the hospital network is unclear, but what is known is that this
platform also allowed for the company to reach out to millions of patients
advertising their services.

Nigel
Moon, the Head of Marketing at BMI Healthcare said at the time “This
advertising and sponsorship package provides us with a great opportunity to
feature BMI Healthcare, our local hospitals and services to a highly targeted
audience at a key time in the patient journey.” BMI Healthcare are just one of
many other private health companies listed as ‘established relationships’,
which include Baxter, GSK and Pfizer and Bayer healthcare, who are able to
reach captive audiences in GP surgeries across the healthcare network. Apart from the healthcare corporates
regularly cited on Amscreen's website, Care UK and Bupa have also been clients.

However,
take up of the Amscreen product has not been as successful as he would like. In
an interview with
marketing company 'Campaign Live', Lord Sugar said ‘I don’t get them…I don’t understand why these people don’t say:
‘Bloody hell, I’ve got a captive audience of hypos [hypochondriacs] sitting
there and I’ll bang my Anadin vs Panadol [messaging] on the screens
non-stop’. The Labour Peer, according to the marketing website believes ‘all
over-the-counter drugs should use Amscreen’s screens in health environments.’ This method according to their own material, will drive an 'uplift in prescriptions.'

Face recognition

In order to improve the
sales of Amscreen, the company has now teamed up with a face recognition company called
Quividi. This technology
will be able to ‘determine the gender, age, date, time and volume of the
viewers’ that look at the adverts and give real-time feedback to the
advertisers. Lord Sugar’s son Simon reckons “brands deserve to know not just an
estimation of how many eyeballs are viewing their adverts, but who they are,
too.”

Alan Sugar, who was given
his peerage in 2009, is a Lord largely in name only. In the last year he has
taken part in 3 debates and has voted in 3.74% of
votes, which given his outside interests is unsurprising. In addition when Lord
Rea put forward a motion to shelve the Health and Social Care bill, Mr Sugar
didn’t bother to turn up. However, he is of use to the Labour party who have
gladly received £333,650.84 in donations from the ‘noble’ peer since 2001.

Privacy

Patients
are surely entitled to be able to enter a GP surgery without being targeted by
advertisers. Patients largely trust their GP and if drugs appear on the screen
in front of them, then they may think that the GPs had control over the
content. This is certainly recognised by
Amscreen who explicitly say the positioning of advertising in a GP surgery is a
‘perceived endorsement’ of a product by
the GP.

The
idea that you will be having your face analysed by advertisers as you sit
waiting for your Doctor is surely an invasion of your privacy, despite assurances
that faces are detected rather than captured. Many people going into the GP
will presumably be concerned over their health, which is a matter not overlooked by Amscreen. In their promotion material
it points out ‘Our high impact screens will provide advertisers with an
opportunity to communicate with a broad audience in a receptive mind-set when
mental and physical wellbeing for themselves, their families and the community
is top of mind.’

Breach of Trust

This all means that a patient without their
knowledge or permission is providing information for free to advertisers in the
perceived trusted environment of their surgery. Although other important
information is imparted on the screens, the local surgery is acting in
partnership with whoever the advertisers happen to be over the contractual period. All this amounts to a
situation in which patients are being taken advantage of in a vulnerable
moment, which is a clear breach of trust by the GP surgery, hospital or dentist, whether privately run or NHS. Such a practice should stop and if you see a screen when you're waiting for your appointment next, then you may need to assume you're being watched.

Clocking your gender and age is hardly a privacy violation. Practices getting something useful for free, sponsored by advertising, is a fairly benign form of public-private partnership, as long as the practice gets to vet the advertisers. I'm no fan of Sugar but I really can't get worked up about this.